Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Ethnocides Among Us

The list of grievances in the 32-page document includes accusations that Canada wants to "eliminate French" from coast to coast. It even referenced the 1839 Durham Report that recommended the assimilation of Quebecers into Upper Canada.

"From the Durham Report to report the hanging of Louis Riel ... to Ontario's ... desire to close Montfort Hospital, the Canadian government allows the majority anglophone provinces to commit quiet ethnocide against the Acadian and French-Canadian minority," the report states.

Study co-author Gilbert Paquette says the only way French Canadians can remain strong is if Quebec separates from Canada.

I'd give the Republic of Quebec a good six months before they ran to Canada for a bailout. The scary thing is that, being as we are the greatest suckers on earth, we'd give it to them. In the interests of good will and understanding. Naturally. You can take the Quebec nationalist out of Canada but not the moocher out of the Quebec nationalist. Half a century after transforming one of the most economically dynamic parts of Canada into Greece with snow, it's unlikely that the hard core ethnic grievance mongering class can make a go of it by themselves.

The ROC has been enabling this sort of behaviour for decades. Why? Because we are nice and want everyone to like us. If something goes wrong in the world it is because we, the English speaking people of Canada, have not been sufficiently nice. If only we'd sit down and apologize enough everything would work out fine. From Lester Pearson scrapping the Red Ensign, because it allegedly offended the French and non-WASPs, to Jean Chretien musing about how 9/11 was caused by poverty, the fault is always ours. To say it's the other fellow would just be plain rude. Rudeness being the last sin in our militantly secular nation.

This is an old story and most people in the ROC have already tuned out. It matters because the money still keeps flowing. The interesting bit here is not the beating over the head with the begging bowl stuff, that's a ritual as predictable as Carnaval and the St Jean Baptiste Day riot. It's the sheer dullness of the proceedings. Citing the Durham Report and Louis Riel? That's not so much a nationalist grievance as a cliched version of a nationalist grievance. It's what anti-French Anglophones say when they're making fun of Quebecois nationalists. The dead enders in the PQ quite literally speak and behave like a bad joke from the 1970s.

The reaction from Ottawa was also quite telling. James Moore, Heritage Minister and BFF of the CBC, shrugged his shoulders and looked at his feet before walking away. Tommy Mulcair questioned the tone. Bob Rae, in a rare moment of honesty, took offense at the gross misuse of the word genocide, pointing out that it cheapens the word and discredits the users. The morally correct response would have been to denounce the "ethnocide" peddlers as cranks and traitors. But for modern Canadian politics the responses of Moore, Mulcair and Rae are encouraging.

Instead of the usual grovelling apologies for having won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, our federal leaders basically don't care. They don't want to antagonize Quebec, especially not Tommy Mulcair, but they honestly couldn't be bothered to do much more. No matter how much the ROC panders the deadender nationalists will never be satisfied. No matter how much they threaten, they're too broke and dependant to leave. So we're stuck in this weird Canadian kabuki.

This too shall pass. Quebec nationalism in its militant form is mostly a boomer phenomenon. Their parents and children never really cared. This is the last of the summer wine which has, at this point, gone quite vinegary. The rising generation in the ROC cares even less. The children of Jamaican, Vietnamese or Indian immigrants care not a whit about 1759 And All That, assuming they even know. Canada to them is Burnaby and Mississauga.

Leave the crazy nationalists alone and eventually they'll go away. In the meantime, unfortunately, we're still stuck with the bill.